Exploring a Case of Knowledge Infrastructure in the Pharmaceutical Environment - A case study at AstraZeneca

Abstract

Knowledge today tends to be an organization’s prime tool in order to compete on the business market. For companies like AstraZeneca where research is one of the corner stones there must be an easy way for accessing and sharing knowledge. To be able to meet these demands organizations have to rely intensively on a stable and welldesigned knowledge infrastructure. In this masters thesis we study one of AstraZeneca’s knowledge sources named AZ Glossary. We investigate how it works as a knowledge infrastructure and how it can be improved to better spread knowledge to the people in the organization. A problem for AstraZeneca today is that the information in the glossary is not machine processable, which means that the information cannot be easily used by other programs and applications. This structure limits the utilization of the glossary and is therefore also affecting the knowledge infrastructure in a less satisfactory way. An ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews with key users and administrators of the glossary was used for mapping AZ Glossary and its organization and usage. An examination of the semantic technologies including languages as XML, RDF (Resource Description Framework) and SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) was carried out in our search to improve the glossary. As a result recommendations are given involving new technical functions tied to the glossary combined with organizational changes to enhance the knowledge infrastructure and knowledge sharing in AstraZeneca.